Here is the series that throws light on some of the box-office
failures that deserve to be ranked as some of the best movies
of Telugu industry. With it, idlebrain.com want to highlight
the efforts that went into the making of the movie, so that
our current generation would never ever forget these long
and forgotten gems.

Radha
Kalyanam

What
is the key ingredient that turns a normal story into a novel
one? The set of the characters remaining constant, what
variable decides the uniqueness of the plot? There were
a lot of movies that dealt with triangular love stories
- Sridhar's "manasae mandiram", which deals with
this aspect from a pathos angle, Raghavendra Rao's "praema
laekhalu", dealing with the traingle issue from a terror
viewpoint and such. The basic theme of a triangle love story,
in itself, lends a lot of scope to present three different
view points, their intentions, motivations and machinations.
Depending on which character is made out to be a bad (guy/gal)
and at what point of time, the choices for the other characters
(and for the audience) become amply clear and the plot would
write itself from there on. Now what if all the characters
in the involved in the triangle are made out to be good,
caring and respectable? This offers even more meat to the
writer to chew on, bringing the most essential ingredient
into the picture - Conflict. Why should the gal in question
opt for guy A and not guy B? Both the guys possess traits
that par in extent and both of them would stand a fair chance,
treating the rest of circumstances on even keel. When the
heart of the heroine tugs in both the directions with the
same intensity, the audience truly feels the pain of the
character turning extremely sympathetic to it, thus elevating
the dramatic tension, whenever all the key players assemble
at one place. Much before Bhansali's Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam,
much before Mani Ratnam's Mouna Raagam, K.Bhagyaraj explored
and exploited this unique feature in triangular love stories
- the goodness of all the characters involved, in his heart-tugging
"Antha 7 Natkal". Bhagyaraj does not offer a single
reason (rather, one better reason) for the heroine to choose
one hero over the other and at the end of it all, the movie
would have remained just as wonderful, had the choice been
switched.

The
movie opens with the girl attempting suicide on her wedding
night and the rest of the events, the cause and the effect,
unfold from there on. It is quite easy and convenient with
this kind of setup to shower loads of sympathy on the lover,
who has been deserted and left for good by the heroine,
making him a martyr in the process. And with the husband
trying to win back the affection of the heroine, the script
would have been reduced to a pre-marriage and post-marriage
observation of the life of a typical girl, who has loved
someone dearly before and currently struggling hard to adjust
to this new life after the union. The focus would have continually
remained on her (refer to Mani Ratnam's Mouna Raagam) and
each of her actions in trying to fit her life into this
new mould would not call for as much sympathy and as much
understanding, if the focus remained on all the three characters
- the lover, the heroine and her husband. Radha is a typical
girl - her wants are limited, her wishes never stretch beyond
the boundaries of her limitations. She hails from a lower
middle-class family and falls deep in love with the new
tenant upstairs. The character sketch of Radha does not
go beyond these few strokes. Palghat Madhavan, the new tenant
upstairs, satisfies all the requirements that would classify
him as the victim of "sinimaa kasTaalu". He aspires
to be a great music director, and he struggles to get by
everyday, in the undying hope of reaching there and making
it someday. Much against his judgment and his sensibility,
he gets drawn towards Radha. Dr. Anand, a widower, is forced
to marry Radha to fulfill his dying mother's wish. He fully
intends to keep his promise of returning Radha to her rightful
owner and partner, Madhavan, after hearing to Radha's reason
behind committing suicide on the first night. Bhagyaraj
carefully arranges all the pieces in place and moves the
first piece.

As
is mentioned before, conflict, according to a wise man,
is the only reason why a movie should even exist in the
first place. Events should lead upto conflict, and events
should end up resolving the conflict. With the motivations
providing the fuel for conflict in the lives of the lead
characters, Bhagyaraj makes the mix interesting by adding
fuel to fire bringing in choice. Whom should Radha choose
finally and why? This is where Bhagyaraj needs to be applauded
for making it really difficult both for the heroine and
the audience in deciding whom she should end up with finally
- the lover, whom she adored and hoped to spend the rest
of her life, dreams and aspirations with or the husband,
whom she now has a new found respect for his sincerity and
dedication in trying to take her life towards a logical
and a rightful end. The lover stands on one side of the
shore with open arms willing to take Radha back into his
arms and back into his life, understanding fully, that though
Radha is no longer with him physically, she continues to
remain with him, in her bubbly spirit, in her childish pranks
and in her melting words, ever after her marriage. The husband
stands on the other side of the shore as a pillar of nobility,
willing to let his wife to back to the place of her choice
and to the person of her choice. He stands as one who truly
understands the meaning of marriage and the underlying intentions
of a union. He does not hold any grudge nor he judge his
wife to her fallibilities. This is the conflict and these
are the choices. From a logical standpoint, the heroine
has to return to her lover and her husband should oversee
the process. From a societal standpoint, what happened much
before marriage has no bearing over what happens after it
and so the status quo should stand and all transfers made
thereof, are illegal and immoral. In between the logical
and the societal standpoint lies somewhere, the humanistic
standpoint - one that belies all the logic and ones that
defies all the conventions of the society.

Bapu-Ramana,
who translated Bhagyaraj's original into Telugu (and later
into Hindi as "Woh 7 din"), remained extremely
faithful to the original, without giving in to crass commercialism
and gross exploitation. Ramana's words shift from being
hilarious best during the wooing period (of Madhavan by
Radha) to being cautiously sensitive during the mourning
period. When Radha hands a piece of paper to Madhavan and
asks him to compose a tune for the lyric (slyly insinuating
her intentions in the prose)

Madhavan
wonders at the absurdity of the lyric to his assistant kuTTi
- "arae kuTTi, neevu laeka naenu laevu, praema laeka
manamu laevu enna raa! Evaru laekapOtae paaTa evaDu raastaayi,
tune evaDu kaDataayi, picture evaDu choostaayi!" Contrasting
the hilarity of this moment to the seriousness of the climax,
Ramana achieves a perfect balance in his tone picking up
just the right words, in his usual form, for the right moments.
With Chandra Mohan, Radhika and Sarat Babu shaping the characters
on paper to living and breathing characters on the celluloid,
Radha Kalyanam remains as a fine piece of film-making, right
from the etching of the words on the paper to the sketching
on the characters on the screen. (On a side note, the character
Madhavan, called Palghat Madhavan, hails from the same place,
Palghat, as K.V. Mahadevan, the music director the movie,
which prompted Veturi to pen